The Grimm Files Collection Boxed Set

by Selene Charles

  Maddox said nothing, but he jerked violently and then flamed on. He burned like the golden god that I suspected he truly was.

  “Godsdammit it, Elle!” he snapped, still shaking powerfully, not able to stomp and roar and destroy, as I was sure he would wish to.

  I shook my head, leaning against the door, knowing my slight weight wouldn’t hold anyone out for long but also knowing that he needed to release it before he could go back out there.

  He burned like a majestic phoenix, flames so hot that I felt my hair go limp. But I watched him, heart in my throat, wishing I could touch him, hold him.

  Now that I was leaving, I was coming to the very startling realization that I didn’t want to go, not without getting some things off my chest first.

  I let him burn for just a little longer before I finally whispered, “Look at me, Maddox.”

  His eyes blazed like jewels when he did, but his fire wasn’t a nova of pure energy anymore. It was simply warm, comforting.

  “I didn’t want to speak of Hook for so many reasons. But the biggest and the most important one was because of you. Because of how I felt for you.”

  His fires died out completely, and he looked broken. The whites of his eyes were red and his skin slightly more golden, as though he’d been out in the sun all day.

  “What?” he asked softly. “What are you doing, Elle?”

  I shrugged. “Hells if I know. I just need to say it. I need to— ”

  “Don’t,” he said softly but with conviction. “Don’t say it.”

  “But—”

  He shook his head. “Tell me when you come back. Don’t say this now. Don’t say this, because it means you don’t expect to make it back, and godsdamnit, Elle, if you don’t come back to me, I’ll”—

  I didn’t let him finish speaking. I rushed at him. He looked startled when I placed my hands on his chest and leaned up on tiptoe. I kissed him, as if it were the first and the last time. Because I didn’t know that it wasn’t. And because if it was, I didn’t want him living with the same regrets I’d had with Hook.

  Hook —the man of my heart, my dreams, my desire, everything. The man I kept pretending wasn’t there anymore. The man I kept shoving away. Because the loss of him had very nearly killed me the first time. I squeezed my eyes shut. It wasn’t time to think of him. Not even now.

  Definitely not now.

  I dug my fingers through Maddox’s hair and hung on for dear life. He wrapped his arms around my waist, squeezing me so tight that I was sure if will alone could have kept me with him, I’d never have left him. He moaned, and so did I. Everything we’d kept bottled up, it was pouring out of us. But there was no more time.

  I felt the ticking of the clock and knew we had seconds before they came looking for us again. I trembled all over, clinging to him with my fingers.

  I opened my mouth, but he placed a finger over it and shook his head. His face looked haunted.

  I palmed the corner of his cheek, letting my finger trace along the outer edge of his full mouth, heart still hammering wildly in my chest.

  “Forewarned is forearmed. I saw it, too, Hatter. And if I saw it, then maybe I can somehow not suffer the fate your vision has shown us.”

  He trembled, and I patted his chest.

  He groaned loudly and murmured, “If something happens, I won’t stop looking for you. You have my word.” He placed his hand over mine and put them upon his heavily beating dual-hearted chest.

  I nodded, and he gently placed a finger beneath my chin and tipped it up.

  With one last hungry moan, he stole my mouth for his. I wanted to live in this moment with him, just us together, and never have to leave it.

  There was a knock at the door, and we broke apart guiltily. I shivered violently, still tasting him on my tongue.

  “Detectives, your five minutes are up. It’s time to go. Now,” Crowley growled, and I nodded.

  “It’s time to go,” I said softly, almost like a whisper.

  He nodded back at me. “Yes, Detective. It is. Just make sure you come back.”

  I grinned, but I knew the smile didn’t reach my eyes. “Of course.”

  I turned on my heel, still trembling all over. But the tremors were small, unnoticeable to all, and only felt by me. When I opened the door, there were Crowley and Hook. Both of them looked at us, Crowley with suspicion and Hook with pain.

  He knew. And somehow, that made him so much more real to me.

  With a careless toss of my hair over my shoulder, I lightly laughed. “Let’s go catch a villain, boys.”

  It was so much easier for me to slip into a role, to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. But the truth was, I was barely keeping myself together. One strong wind, and I’d snap.

  Hook’s arm brushed mine, and I knew it had been intentional. I also knew that he knew I wasn’t well. At all. But he said nothing about it, and I said nothing, either.

  Sometimes it was just easier to ignore the truth. I felt Hatter’s stare like a brand on my back as I followed Crowley out the door, but I didn’t look back. Because I couldn’t.

  CHAPTER 34

  DETECTIVE ELLE

  I HAD no idea how it had happened, but somehow I was standing on the stern of a large wooden ship, facing the endless expanse of the waters as the sun set slowly before us, headed toward only the gods knew where and the gods knew what.

  If the bridge wasn’t fixed, we might very well sail off the very edge of the universe and be forever trapped in a time loop. I didn’t know if that was even possible, but I didn’t know that it wasn’t. And if the bridge was fixed, if somehow it was possible to reach Nowhere, that might actually be even worse.

  Tapping my fingers on the wooden railing, I gazed deep into the waters. We’d acquired use of an enchanted ship from the bureau. The way it cleanly cut through the waters, moving at speeds not even I could keep up with, it was a technological marvel. But even so, the thrill of wanting to shed my skin and race it was a budding obsession.

  Once upon a time, I’d simply been a girl, a princess of the deep, free to roam and frolic and do whatever the hells I wanted because I desired to do it. When had I become this person? Uptight? Serious? Weighted down by the cares of the world?

  I’d once laughed, swum, drunk, and sexed whatever the hells I wanted when I wanted. Now all there was for me was an endless tidal wave of case after case, bad guy after bad guy. And somewhere on the damn ship was Hook, my Hook, and it was impossible to ignore it or forget it.

  “Fecking hells,” I snapped, tapping my toe on the deck as I wished for the millionth time that I could just jump in and never come back.

  “Don’t even think about jumping in, fish. All I need is one reason to slap my cuffs on you, and you’d better fucking believe I’ll do it too.”

  I turned at the sound of Crowley’s gruff words. Crowley was a wolf shifter, meaning he was stealthy and silent when he wished to be. But considering we were the only three on board, I wasn’t exactly surprised to find my solitude had been breached.

  Glancing at him, I noted the surprisingly not unpleasant musk of his cologne—woodsy and piney—and the way his thick, dark hair ruffled in the strong breeze. I lifted an eyebrow as he slid off his ever-present mirrored sunglasses.

  His irises were a strange hue, sometimes bright green, like Hatter’s “future” eye, yet when he turned, I’d also catch a glint of deep and bloody red, not unlike a feline’s or a canine’s when the light would catch their eyes just right.

  I wondered if that was why he always wore his glasses, because of how unnervingly unhuman he looked when they were off. But Grimm was full of unhumans like us, so I doubted that was it, either.

  The truth was, though, I knew next to nothing about who Crowley was, other than a constant thorn in my flesh. Who he was, what he did for fun… not a clue. Eat children, I’d imagine. He was such a fecking bastard most of the time that in all honesty, I didn’t give a rat’s arse one way or the other. But we were trapped together for the f
oreseeable future, and it was either talk to him or keep thinking about Hook.

  I sighed, staring back at the waters. We were getting set to enter the golden triangle, an invisible spot on the geographical map of Grimm’s coastal waters where the transdimensional portal for water travel was at its strongest peak. The circumference of it wasn’t actually all that large, but the convergence of earth, water, and wind magick was greatest at the very center of it. It was how boats with special access to other dimensions could travel from one realm to the other.

  I didn’t have to see the coordinates Crowley had inputted to know—my affinity to water made it obvious to me.

  The sun had very nearly set. Nothing but a blaze of orange and purple hues lit up the skies. The waters were a deep blue, almost black color. Already, I could see the pinpricks of starlight.

  At no point in my life did I ever imagine I’d find myself on a ship to Nowhere, literally, with only Hook and Crowley for company. Sighing, I shook my head slowly. I felt so fecking off, and I couldn’t understand why. Maybe it was all that damn coffee with its potent magick shots, which had worn off and was forcing me to feel ten times what I had previous to ingesting the damned spells. I tapped my fingers on the banister, feeling like a junkie desperate for her next hit.

  I just wasn’t in the mood to verbally spar with the bastard. I didn’t want to take Crowley’s baiting. I didn’t want to fight. All I felt was a giant ball of unease. And it was destroying me like a cancer from the inside out.

  Crowley frowned, and from the corner of my eye, I caught him move just slightly closer to the railing, filling my lungs with the not wholly unpleasant scent of his body.

  “What’s the fucking matter with you, Arielle?” he asked gruffly, sounding a little put out, as though he wasn’t even sure why he was asking me that, like the very thought of it was shocking to him.

  I looked at him side-eyed. “Are you really doing this?”

  He snorted and shrugged, looking put out and as confused as hells. “Fuck if I know.”

  He sighed deeply, and I heard the exhaustion in his voice, the strain of long days and nights finally starting to catch up to him, weighing him down. I felt his look burn into my profile.

  He stood silently for a while until he softly said, “But usually when I taunt you, you don’t roll over like a little bitch and let me keep doing it.”

  He didn’t ask me again what was the matter, but I heard the question threaded beneath the words.

  I snorted, feeling the slightest bit of annoyance but not enough to bother working up to any kind of true anger. So I shrugged instead. “How sure are we really that a mere slipper can actually help her raise this evil? Feels to me like there should be more, like we’re maybe missing something, right?”

  He looked startled by my questions, as if he’d not expected them. And I was surprised that he no longer taunted me but rather gave me an intelligent and thoughtful response.

  “The Slashers, we now know, hid their whereabouts by not doing as we expected. Their home base was never above the clouds, as you’d imagine a group of flying shifters would have it.”

  He was still looking at me as if I surprised him, but I was surprised that he was actually not giving me shite for once. Crowley was actually treating me like an equal.

  Somewhere, pigs were flying.

  “Instead,” he said in a thick, gravelly drawl, “they made the waters their home. It’s why they eluded us for so long. Everything that we expected they should do, everything history has told us should happen, none of it did.” He slapped his palm on the railing, obviously agitated. “The damn birds didn’t fly, save for when on the job. The rest of the time, they’d learned to adapt to a new way of being. Fucking smart, that’s what they were.”

  “I rather think,” I said as I glanced straight ahead at a world more purple than orange, “that had they never gotten too big for their britches, we might never have stopped them. Black Angus was a clever bastard.”

  Crowley snorted then chuckled softly. “That, he was. A fucking thief. But honorable in his own warped way.”

  I grinned. “Hindsight being what it is, I’d have to agree. He was a fecking thief but not dangerous. No one died under his watch. But this shite— ”

  “It’s fucking dangerous is what it is,” he snapped. His eyes gleamed, switching between green and red before settling back to their soft-green shade.

  Suddenly, I had a thought. A long shot, but it could fit. “You know, I keep thinking about Lord Humpty. Why he was aiding the syndicate. They had something on him, right? But what? He owned a fleet of vessels. Nothing inherently illegal about that. What is his role in all of this? What was Midas’s, at that? Just to get me to the ball?”

  Crowley frowned, looking a touch lost, and for once, I wanted to smirk.

  “Oh, I see Bo didn’t tell you that part, did she?”

  His eyes narrowed to slits. “Got something to share, fish?”

  I snorted and turned, leaning casually against the banister with my elbows. “I wasn’t with my informant the night of Midas’s gala. I was there. At the damned ball. At his behest. Why? Because he got a note from Lord Humpty, all but telling him to invite me there.”

  “Why?”

  I wasn’t sure whether he was wondering why I’d been invited or why Bo hadn’t told him, but I shrugged. “Hook came for me, Crowley. That’s what he said. They were there not there for the jewels, but for me.”

  “And you believe him?”

  I rolled my wrist. “I don’t know. Makes as much sense as anything else, I suppose.”

  He licked his front teeth. “That is interesting. And does suddenly make me wonder whether you should have stayed back in Grimm.”

  “Hook’s not going to be an— ”

  “I’m not speaking of Hook. He’s been wiped of the trace on him. He’s whatever the hells he was before.” He gestured dismissively. “But this is Intel I damn well should have been told first.”

  He glared at me, as though it were me that had kept it hidden from him. Which just pissed me the hells off.

  “Excuse me, but if I were trying to hide that from you, what possible reason would I have had for revealing it now?”

  He opened his mouth and held a finger just beneath my nose, his big body practically vibrating with fury. But then he quickly deflated, and he shoved his fingers through his hair. “I’m not happy that you’re here. In fact, I’m not even sure why we’re talking, you and me. You piss me off more than anyone I’ve ever known before, princess ,” he snapped.

  I was pretty sure that in his own warped and roundabout way, that had actually been an apology. I lifted an eyebrow. “Okay then. Got that out of your system?”

  He grunted then heaved a long-suffering breath. “I think Lord Humpty’s role in this was purely wrong place, wrong time. He was a weak, pathetic male. Easily blackmailed.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I know the type,” he said with a roll of his lips as though he were disgusted. “They got dirt on him, clearly.”

  “What?”

  He blinked. “Does it matter? He was a filthy elitist who would die if anyone knew the really dirty, dark truths of him. He liked to fuck pigs when no one was looking. Hells, I don’t know.”

  I couldn’t help it. I chuckled a little. Which set off Crowley, who made a weird noise I would swear was actually amusement. But then he was back to looking stern and mean and grumpy all over again. The man was entirely confusing to me.

  “Good guess, I suppose. So you think he got found out and decided better to work for them than to not?”

  “That’s generally how these things go,” he said, sounding bored. And he was right. Occam’s razor said the simplest theory was usually the correct one.

  “Okay, so he gets in a pinch, and his lover, Midas, has to bail him out by turning sand to gold?”

  Crowley sniffed. “Guess it’s my turn to enlighten you, fish face, but gold is one of the best conductors for magick. Especially wh
en you don’t have a witch fully in control of her spells to create a refined and elegant incantation.”

  I hated to admit that I didn’t know that, especially to him, but… “Hells.”

  He chuckled.

  “Arrogant bastard,” I said but not spitefully.

  At first he looked unsure about how he should take that, but his shoulders relaxed, and he moved in closer toward the railing.

  “That accounts for the gold grains, I guess. And Bonny, obviously dabbling in some form of elementary witchcraft.”

  “Strong enough to create a gang of loyal zombies. I’d say the girl is far from mere elementary.”

  “Touché.” I sighed. “So they, what? Take one of Humpty’s vessels, make it their own? Sail the high seas. Going unnoticed for decades. The equation was obviously working. And well. Why escalate things? Why now? What’s changed?”

  “Greed,” Crowley guessed. “That ever-present obsession with humans for more.”

  My eyebrows gathered. “Not just humans, Crowley.”

  “Fine. The less enlightened.”

  I snorted. “So wolves aren’t greedy? Is that what you’re claiming?”

  “Can’t speak for all of them, but I know when I’ve had enough.”

  “Fine. Say, for argument’s sake, it is just greed. Human weakness. Why the witch? Why try to resurrect that thing?”

  He pinned me with a sharp and very intelligent gaze, leaving me feeling odd. I almost felt as if I were seeing Crowley for the first time in some ways.

  “Have you considered, for one second, that maybe she’s not trying to resurrect the witch?”

  I chuckled. “Well, there is obviously no reason to go to Nowhere otherwise.”

  He shook his head, looking at me blankly for a long enough time that I started to wonder if I was trapped in some sort of nightmare and I wasn’t even there at all, but asleep, passed out somewhere after all.

  “I would think you were trying to make a fool of me, but I can’t scent any deceit in you right now, and it’s messing with my fucking head, fish. How can you be of Undine and not know this?”